The army could conquer and control the Gaza Strip today if the government orders
such an operation, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Friday.
“If the
cabinet will want the IDF to conquer and control Gaza, this is something that is
possible today if it is deemed fit,” Barak said, speaking at a conference at the
Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies in
Herzliya.
Barak’s speech focused on IDF’s 2009 Cast Lead offensive
against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, saying that the army “didn’t need to drag that
out for 22 days... Our exit from Gaza during Cast Lead was justified, but we
could have left 10 days earlier with the same results.”
Barak also
referred to statements made by former OC Southern Command Maj.- Gen. Yoav
Galant, who said the IDF could have re-occupied the Philadelphia Corridor
separating the Strip from Sinai, in Rafah, the southern Gaza Strip, during the
war, saying “the reason we didn’t occupy Rafah is for the same reason we didn’t
call for it during the planning stage – you don’t want to be in control of
150,000 Palestinians, to worry about providing them with diapers, milk, and
running water.”
Former IDF chief of Staff Lt.- Gen. (res.) Gabi Ashkenazi
also spoke at the conference. He addressed the importance of collaboration
between the government and the military in planning military
operations.
“The General Staff and its head cannot sit outside the
political echelon’s discussions about a possible war. They must be there and if
they aren’t there then they need to make it happen, this way there will be less
mistakes,” he said.
Ashkenazi’s comments came against the backdrop of the
common belief that the prime minister and the defense minister are more in favor
of carrying out a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities than the heads of the IDF
and the security establishment.
“The General Staff must understand how to
interface with the political level when they move to go to war. The military
must be a partner and issue recommendations. This has an influence on the
results of the war, and this is our obligation as commanders,” Ashkenazi
said.
IDF commanders must see the big picture and not just view things in
the terms of the battlefield, he said, adding, “There must be a coordination of
expectations between the military level and the political level, this dialogue
is critical to managing the results.”